In WWII, we waited until Germany had taken over much of Europe, and didn’t even enter the war until Japan attacked us. I believe that the U.S. has no right to police the world, but in the midst of Hitler’s attempted takeover, was not military force the only possible option? Was there an economic option that could have been taken?
World War 1 started the whole mess!
My understanding is limited, but I agree with your statement. The only way Hitler came to power was by giving people hope to get out of the horrible mess that they were in, which was caused by WWI. I have come to believe that the US intervened in WWI because of the progressive interventionest idealogy and the US only made things worse. The US and other countries taking sides in WWI was what led to the disasterous circumstances allowing Hitler to come to power (IMO). But let’s say Hitler comes to power without WWI creating the German hope for a renewed Germany. Let’s say Germans have faith in Hitler because of something else that destroyed their economy, and Nazi Germany begins invading. What was the U.S., to do in that circumstance? What are the European countries being attacked to do in those circumstances?
That’s kind of like asking what to do about a madman with a gun. At that point, it is too late for options other than the user of force. The key is to keep him from getting the gun in the first place. In Hitler’s case, his threat came from the acceptance of the fascist ideology, and the industrial resources of Germany. There were three ways that could have been prevented: advocating good ideas, refusing to trade with a rising dictatorship, and refusing to contribute to the economy of a dictatorship.
Well, the first thing you can do is, like other posters have said, is prevent him from coming to power by staying out of WWI. Second, you could open up your immgration to Jews and Gypsies in Germany escaping oppression. Third, the Nazis relied on slave labor for their economy, so they were doomed from the start. I’m sure other posters can provide better answers, as I’m getting ready to go to bed.
Then you’ve just agreed that WWII was a mistake, any other conclusion would be a contradiction.
If WWI caused Hitler, that is an excellent argument against fighting a second war of the exact same nature. If wars ultimately lead to more wars then the obvious solution is peace.
The problem that Classiclib and Heroiclife are having is that they unwittingly accept a number of war propogandas as factual. Rather than creating a truly revisionist critique of the war, they have created a new revisionist justification for the same old establishment conclusion.
The argument is: The Bad Government created a bad situation, but since the situation was so far removed from the normal, good operations of society “extreme” measures must be taken to correct the situation.
That same argument can be, and has been, applied to that other Rooseveltian disaster, the Great Depression. Surely if government intervention into the economy caused the great depression then the obvious remedy is the removal of government intervention. A reworking of, or worse, increase in intevention is incapable of solving the problem. The same is true of military intervention in Europe.
Do not fall for the establishment lie that Hitler was an unprecedented evil. This is a line designed to fool the historically ignorant. After all, Europe seemed to come out of the whole Napoleon disaster alright. It certainly doesn’t hold up in light of the Allied atrocities of WWI(and II).
Also, do not fool yourself into believing there was a libertarian way to fight WWII. Americans had no desire to die to save Europe from the fruits of its own wickedness, and rightly so. It took a foreign attack caused by a belligerent American foreign policy to trick Americans into giving up their good sense and giving into fear. And even then overt slavery was required to conduct the war.
Lastly, built into this anti-nazi sentitment is a pro-french and pro-englishment sentitment. Hitler was evil surely, but so were the damned French and English. Yet you dare endorse one over the other? You would shelter tyrants?
By setting an example of a society that doesn’t tolerate physical coersion, and follows a foriegn policy of non-interventionism will progressives, radicals, and interventionists, just jump on the non-interventionist, free markets bandwagon?
How do you idealogically fight an enemy which brainwashes its citizens.
By the way, I’m not trying to be dense, just inquisitive.
Citizens are always at war with their own states(even though they don’t always know it).
The collapse of the Soviet Union pretty much sinks the theory of the invulnerable state. The interventionist argument suggests that the most coercive states are the most dangerous, but really they are the most vulnerable.
So then you would maintain that extremely coercive states cannot persist even through the use of fear and propaganda? Masses are easily manipulated, and I don’t really understand how states manipulating the masses makes them vulnerable.
It rather pisses me off when I hear this question. Only possible option to do or prevent what may I ask?! To keep the Germans at bay - like the neocons like to think? Germany did declare war on the US but it’s naive to think Hitler could have made it across the Atlantic when he could barely cross the English Channel. Of course you might mean to end the genocide and tyranny, but then military force was patently not the only possible option; after all we could have always done, oh I don’t know… nothing! I simply fail to see how Americans were ever responsible for preventing the death of anyone with whom they had no contract to protect.
On the other hand I’m not terribly unsympathetic to the second of these causes (saving people’s lives certainly seems like a worthy endeavor), and there is nothing unlibertarian per se with aiding someone who is being aggressed against by another party. The main problem occurs when government muddles up what would otherwise be a legitimate (consensual) rescue mission by forcing people to support it either by conscription or through taxation.
But even in restricting oneself to non-state military action for the purpose of helping the oppressed, an ideal situation is still nearly impossible to come by, since in war it is usually civillians who suffer the most. Furthermore the circumstances of most large scale conflicts are not so clear-cut as the Holocaust (the means and extent of which BTW were virtually unknown outside concentration camps until the Nuremburg trials at end of the war). In general the best foreign policy is and will always be neutrality.
There was a well-organised resistance movement within the upper echelons of the German armed forces, composed of Germany’s traditional nobility, which wanted nothing more than allied support to off Adolf Hitler and take over the government in order to end the war.
The allies refused because they insisted on nothing less than the total destruction of Germany.
Hmm… you know this whole time I’ve just been playing devil’s advocate, but I guess I can’t stop you from getting angry. Anyways while I continue to entertain this idea, I’m going to further it a little by telling you Hitler was not too far from finishing an atomic bomb and some very high tech aircraft, and if the US hadn’t stepped in when it did, well, I’ll leave that up to your imagination…
I support the assertion earlier that Hitler was a madman, and there was nothing left to do but unite and stop him. Hitler motivated through fear and propaganda and there wasn’t really a descent way to speak out without being snitched on. When you’re worried about a Nazi soldier putting a bullet in the back of your head, morality kind of goes out the window, and self-preservation takes its place. This is how Hitler kept his people in line, and why he was nearly unstoppable.
I don’t find anything wrong about fighting Germany in WW2.
What I find wrong is the use of tax dollars and slavery to do it.
Thank you! Something I can agree with. I suppose that in a truly free society, the initiation of force would be outlawed. If Europe was made up of only free countries with the exception of Nazi Germany, any country could retaliate once Nazi Germany had taken the first step of invading a country. In this situation if Nazi Germany were to invade France for instance, France could retaliate with force. If France requested aid, other countries could assist France knowing that it would only be a matter of time before they were invaded as well.
Human nature is such that violence will always exist. You must have a plan to minimize it or choas ensues.
Of course fighting a war against Hitler would only be right if tax dollars were not used to do it. One alternative to armies would be privately owned security companies, which would act in the best interests of the company. It wouldn’t be profitable for the company to create a situation worse than the one it entered into, because then people would stop funding it, and competing companies would get more customers.
Again, The Market for Liberty (and I think Hoppe’s Democracy - the God that Failed and The Myth of National Defense) are still the best books on the topic.
I began reading The Market for Liberty yesterday and I’m enjoying it thoroughly. I’ll look into Hoppe’s books.
Okay, I’ll bite … Stalinist Russia would have been defeated?
So if Truman nukes Hiroshama thats bad, but if I throw a nuke I built in my basement thats okay?
How will you fight this war against Hitler? By killing soldiers that aren’t Hitler? By marching across land that isn’t Hitlers? By bombing cities that aren’t Hitler.
The volunteer army ideas does have a certain darwinesque appeal though, where people with more ideology than sense and more romance than morality would meet an early grave in a foreign land.
The allies had no choice but to neutralize the threat. Nazi Germany initiated the conflict and Nazi Germany had the power to continue the conflict if there was no resistance. Hitler kept the German people from rebelling through fear. Through invasion they constantly replenished their resources so it’s not like stopping trade to them would have mattered. War sucks, I get it. In the case of other big imperialists like Napoleon, Napoleon didn’t have military might to take over the world although he might have if there had been no resistance.
The only way we won’t have future Hitlers attaining the power he did, is by stopping initiatory physical coercion in its tracks. We create a society were taking over by force can only be detrimental to an individual, and you will have a society at its most peaceful and free state.
This isn’t in regard to the atomic bombs:
Killing civillians in a war is certainly immoral, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t fight a war. If a man is holding a human shield while going on a murderous rampage, that doesn’t mean you can’t shoot him, even if it means thel the hostage is killed. All innocent people killed, including the hostage, should be blamed entirely on the murderer.